the conspiracy

I am a slave to possibility —
you might, perchance, tell me that you love me.
I keep my cell phone always at my side,
check my email more than I should,
read every billboard, check every paper,
and glance from time to time to see if there
is writing written in the sky.

Patience is not a virtue for lovers —
time and distance are ancient enemies —
I am helpless against this desire
to sate my thirst of you,
thus, I conspire.

Sonnet

I'm a slightly blurry picture taken
two years ago — my cheeks are flush with wine —
I smile, but not with my eyes; often
I'm the photographer, but not this time.
You stand with friends, arms around each other.
Your picture shows a party in progress.
You face the camera with much laughter,
with friends, with joie de vivre, with a red dress.
I barely know you, but still I love you.
At least, I love the idea of you.
I'm smart enough not to believe my heart,
but wise enough to think the world of you.
I say too much, but my eyes bespeak true,
for you live life as your heart's work of art.

The composition decomposed

the first few sentences
     jotted notes
the pearl of an idea
          the motif
          a seduction
     a letter of introduction to a grand theme
if one believes in those sorts of things

But in all matters of ambition
there is awkwardness and uncertainty
     until there is flight—
my heart flutters
     my voice quivers
          my chest shakes
struggling to keep this nakedness from my face.

In a dream once
I was the boy I once was
     singing high and pure
     a clarion made of man
     a soul uncomplexed and pure—
and this is the voice I would sing to you with—
     not as a boy, but with that purity,
          that unseeing love.

We forget though
that all things are made and are made to decay—
     even tears
should be left out in the rain.
The last few sentences
are reminders
of all we have learned.
The theme finished
     recapitulated as a caress
a few lines more. . .

This landscape of you

This landscape of you
twin capped peaks beckoning me to climb
beech forests of dappled sunlight
golden fields on hills
caves of unkempt secrets
pools of thought
and even when I hold you close
and feel your warmth
I listen to the wind
and hear you breath.

"A butterfly does not become a caterpillar,"

A butterfly does not become a caterpillar,
and a tree does not become a seed;
and like a butterfly or a tree,
no matter how fond we are
of what we have been,
we are each of us irrevocable outcomes,
in our cases
of decision and chance.
Our lives are mad gambles played with flesh,
and while some are horrified
at the bare bones nature of this high stakes game,
others revel with abandon.

I cannot not love you.
I cannot unflutter my heart
when I see your face
hear your voice
glance into your eyes.
What I do not know
is the balance of this love—
how much of love is a decision?
how much is chance?
Like a fire,
it began with a spark—
like a house on fire
parts of me are smoldering
parts of me are rapt
with conflagration.

I tug at the elbow of the maitre de jeu
placing even more into the game—
without really knowing
what the chips mean—
no one knows
and yet everyone plays.
I am playing as if my chips were on fire—
if my decision was wrong
then only chance can save me—
and yet I feel so sure—
surer than a seed or caterpillar
ever could be.

journal

The word I distrust most is “I”—
I am not what I thought I was;
I have not become what I dreamed;
I am the unreliable
narrator in this story of self—
the path is either strewn with leaves,
or there is no path there at all.

I want—do I really?
I need—why? tell me why?
a constant internal haggle,
a marriage with myself
based on unfulfilled promises
and unfulfilling love—
my voice grates against my ears,
and so I whisper,
except when I don’t.

I thought I was moral,
but I have done questionable things.
I thought I was a lover,
but I left those who loved me.
I thought I was many things
I have turned out not to be.

If my personality were deconstructed
in the way these words could be—
“I” encompasses too much
for a one-letter word—
sparks of passion
wrestling with an ambition
that is uncomfortable with itself—
a boy tyrant shouting,
“This is the way the world should be”,
at the old man who whispers,
“This is the way the world is”—
a writer
who does and doesn’t know
what I am
(or is),
or could be.

The garden party
the sweet fragrance of wild mint
unfinished poems.

North Florida, 1998

When I return
                in summer,
I return
        to the summer rain—
   thunder in the distance,
                then near,
              then rumbling
                          away.

If the trees could
        they would shake themselves
           like dogs—
       every leaf is dripping.

And I walk
        between the puddles
under the trees
        to the field—
                subdued sunlight
          and grasses
and a moment
  I try vainly
        to grasp
           from time.

Beneath the opening sky
the thunder soft in the distance
there is a peacefulness
which is caught
     by the summer air
and fills
        every crevice
  inside.

Bestiality

        “Need is my tactic, detachment
         Is my strategy. When I had
         No lover, I courted sleep.”
                                 — Robert Pinsky, from “Samurai Song”


1.
I could quote you—
I was told once that the rhinoceros
with its one horn was symbolic
of purity—
the rhinoceros was the unicorn—
but to me, the rhinoceros is rage—
“Your letter truly shocked me.”


2.
“Your letter truly shocked me.
And yes, it angered me as well.”
You could have accused me of arrogance,
of hypocritical self-righteousness.
But instead you accused me of ignorance:
“I realized you [. . . ] don’t know me at all—how sad.”
You are the zebra who says,
“You are not like me,
    your stripes are not like mine.”


3.
When I swam with the fishes,
I was mean and cruel.
Sometimes, when I caught my prey
I would nibble on its fins
and let it swim away—
knowing, slower,
        it would never escape
        the next predator’s gaze.
But there is no ill-will among the fishes—
life is too short—
in the depths, they say, is Leviathon.
What Leviathon is afraid of
they do not say.


4.
Yes, there was a change in tone.
In our notes we discussed plans
to spend New Years in New York City.
Where I was so kind and understanding,
I became callous, cold.
I criticized you,
        and I criticized your life.
I wrote that “I never did want to fall in love with you [. . . ]
the primary reason is this: you are fucked up.
Your life is fucked up.”
I must have sounded
    like a baboon
       chiding
           the lion.

aroundabout

It was not a poem,
     in one sense,
it was a meta-poem,
          a poem about poetry,
although the term “meta-”
     comes from the Greek word “after”,
because Aristotle’s books on
          metaphysics
were those written after
          his books on physics.
Thus the word “meta-”
     took on a life of its own.

So was it a poem about poetry,
     or was it a poem after poetry?
In the South—southern United States—
we say when someone is after someone,
     they are out to get them,
that is when they are after them
     they means them harm.
So was it a poem out to get
                    poetry,
     to do poetry irreparable harm?

Of course, then there is the idea “after”—
what is poetry if it comes after poetry,
is it still poetry?
is it more poetry?
Why isn’t it with poetry to begin with,
why does it come after?

If it is a poem written after a poem—
is that plagiarism?
isn’t that copying someone else’s
          style?
isn’t that what it means: done after
          Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”?
So who is the poem copying anyway?

And if it wasn’t really a poem,
     but a meta-poem,
what was it: prose? a song?
     a legal treatise on thirteenth century
                    Burgundy?

If it wasn’t a poem,
     what was it after?

“Naked,”

Naked,
like the heart is naked
    when it admits
            to the soul beneath
        that it is on fire—
    together,
        they overwhelm the mind.
A nakedness
        of longing.
A nakedness of desire.

And this is how I long to see you,
        to hold you,
    to touch you,
with every touch
        a touch
    of desire.

This love
    is not for the weak
        but for the strong—
for when the soul whispers—naked—
it burns and sears and turns and touches
every aspect
        of one's life.

Naked,
is how I long to see you
        and be with you
    in heart, soul, mind,
as I caress
each and every part
        of you—
no, nothing, nothing
    undesired.

“At some point,”

At some point,
you start counting—
because for all your life
you want someone to love
and someone to love you.

And then, later,
you want to stop counting—
because for all your life
you want someone to love
and someone to love you.

lucida

These photographs are moments of movement—
Bedouin racing their arab stallions
across the sand—dancers walking through air
with the same ease as Jesus on water—
how can I translate this for you

these pictures of goalies mid-lunge,
of these racers caught without time
of these smiles made without effort—
you who have arrested my heart
forever paused in the shutter’s eye?

Discourse and Intercourse, I. Prologue

Poetry is a martial art—
    its rhythms
                are the rhythms
   of combat—pacing—
  its words
                are etched with blood
                           with sweat
                           with body blows
its meanderings
        are long arms
                entwining
  its punctuation
                kicks,
                trips,
                hits to the head
its messages
              conveyed
                    in the silence
              after
                     the scream.

Edmund the Confessor

The pay phone is broken.
The night manager reads the horoscopes
     from the day before—
does he ever think,
     “These aren’t for today.
          They were yesterdays”?
I don’t know,
and I don’t know if the pay phone
     has succumbed
     to heart break, existential pain,
          abuse, being used,
       or if it's waiting for an assignation.
I hear a woman, at the phone next to mine, say,
          “I’m here now”—
but I’m not,
          I don’t know where I am.
     My ink has already stained the bed spread.
     The ink bleeds now
          in the phone book.

I think Edmund the Confessor
will be waiting for me in hell.

The woman next to me gets up—
          I think she’s disappointed.
     I want to offer her a cigarette,
but more than that
I want to use the phone.
What am I doing here, I think,
     because I know this shouldn’t matter,
yet it does
and I don’t know why
I just move on.

A king, I remember, must always be a king.
A lover, once consigned to the role,
     must be a lover,
even if it's wrong.

the limit

                           “I confess to find
          Myself astonished by the outskirts of things:”
               —Sarah Hannah, from Cassetta Frame (Italy, circa 1600)


At first there were these little strips of wood,
then larger pieces, connected pieces—
I dislocated my jaw a few times—
large stretches of painted chamfered poplar
and when that picture frame was done—no rest—
my distorted mouth would open wider
for a rococo niello frame.

I wondered if I had swallowed some strange
emetic. For hours each day I retched
increasingly complicated pieces
carved gilded painted molded all designed,
or so it would appear, for some canvas
or photograph or painted panel.
(I began to feel incomplete.)

What was the meaning of this, this vomit,
that drove me away from my family
with my strange gurgling sounds of agony
and interrupted my work with visits
to my doctor, who, despite this piece
of walnut extruding from my
mouth, could find nothing wrong with me?

Perhaps my mouth became an artisan—
a form of glandular psychosis—
with dreams and ambitions and emotions
all unto its own, separated.
What could I tell the rest of me?
“Let’s stick together boys. The mouth
will come around. He’ll come around.”

But without my mouth to echo my speech—
strange how resonance adds authority—
parts of my body deserted me.
My left leg became a dancer,
jumping about in odd rhythms
and at odd times of day. My ears,
annoyed with my mouth, stopped listening.

Lame, deaf, and muted—spewing brushed alum-
inum with gold inlay—and writhing,
I had long lost what dignity
I may have thought I might have had.
I scolded my mouth, little good
that it would do: “It’s all your fault.
Why not make art? Why only frames?”

But we are all caught by the edges—
the edges between life and death,
hatred and desire, reason
and insanity, between breaths,
longing, friendships, loss, and heartache.
The border is where my heart gasps
and I redefine who I am.

I dance more often now, listen
more acutely, and speak more freely,
no longer hindered by spewed wood
(however beautifully ornate).
The absurdity of it all
confounds me. I should learn to paint,
if only to show off these frames.

They Still Shoot Horses

They still shoot horses
          who break their legs
                    tangled twisted
               no more a race horse
          no longer desired.

They train you
     give you amphetamines
     and they tell you who to kill—
     the wife of a dissident in hiding
          the ten year old son
          of a minor official
          whose loyalty is suspect.
     You don’t know why you kill these people.—
          you sight the scope
          you calm your breathing
          you squeeze
a puff of smoke
     and it is done—
     but you imagine
you have to imagine
     a reason.
You tell yourself
     these people are terrorists
     these people are insurgents
but there are too many men who kiss their children goodbye
     too many wives
     too many children.
The reasons you imagine are lies
     and you realize this
     and it is the loneliest, most desolate night
               of your life.

You remember a racetrack in your youth
     a trampled jockey
     the horse neighing in pain
     silence both before and after
               the firing of the gun.

When Anubis

When Anubis places my heart
in front of Ammit and Thoth unrecords
my name from the scroll of the blessed dead
I will plead, pleading first to Thoth,
for the god of writing writes and unwrites
with sacred ink that has known no mistake
a hierography of all things
worth reckoning in their truest measures.
I will plead not for release, but for pause,
and should his plumed quill arrest
I will lie prostrate in front of Ammit
mumbling the litany of the guilty—
do not devour everything,
just that which is lacking inside of me—
and this petition will amount to naught
for I will have been adjudged.
Ammit’s crocodile tears will bring no cheer
when I no longer cease to be.
Perhaps Thoth might make a note,
“of insufficient literary or historical value”,
a note that, too, will be unwritten
in the golden scroll of the blessed dead.

tiger, jungle, fog

It is approached
     as one would approach a tiger
     in the jungle
          in the fog—
what is this song you sing,
who is this lover you are leaving?

There is no need to explain
     the particulars—fogs, jungles, tigers—
only,
     in describing the path,
     the particulars fade
               to shadows and dust.

I want you—
     who is this lover you are leaving?

the star

          a spot of light
          upturned
                    eyes.

The End of the Poem

[. . .]
something seems to be lost,
   but in time,
like the memory of a lover,
it returns. . .
        sometimes
                in an unexpected way.

Do not ask the big questions—
                why
                and why
                and why now—
   with the expectation of an answer.
Sometimes
  the lack of an answer
is the reason
        for being:
it is what the sailor hears
            when he is seduced
by the sound
        of the sea.